The Debaser [Online]

Some years back, a pamphlet detailing the process animals go through from alive and kicking to cold cuts in your friendly supermarket deli materialised on our coffee table, and because I'd already completed the SMH Quick Quiz and puzzled over Hägar the Horrible for several fruitless minutes, I decided it'd be a nice, quiet read.

And that’s how I went from a teetering sometimes-meat-eater to full-fledged card carrying vegetarian. It’s been somewhere like four years now and you know what? It’s workin’ for me. I’m not militant about it. I don’t throw red paint on rich broads wearing fur. I don’t glare across the table if whoever I’m dining with eats a side of cow. I just choose not to be part of that process and I get on with my day. Pretty swell world we live in where I can do that, no? Which is why I’m always so confounded by how downright affronted some people are when you utter those four words: I don’t eat meat.

Oh, you’re always going to get the standard jokes about carving a block of Tofurky for Christmas lunch or not having the energy to walk up stairs and you take those on the chin because, heh, it is pretty funny when you think about it. But there was a guy at work once who flew into something of a rage when he found out I’d given up on all things fleshy. He was like - and I paraphrase - "But if our ancestors didn't eat meat! We wouldn't have big brains! And! And! We never would have enjoyed the benefits of the H-bomb, Twitter and Top 40 music!" [end rant] I informed him that, snaps to our ancestors, but my brain ain't getting any bigger and I could afford to not eat animals for now. Thanks for taking it so personally though.

I blame Sam Neill. Suddenly everyone’s an expert about what I should put in my gut because he said meat is “brain food” then danced with an orangutan. Yeah, way to convince me Neill - gnaw on a piece of lamb then get up close-and-personal with a primate. I mean, ew.

In the scheme of things, I’m wondering how this is really a problem. People are weird; I’ll never figure that out but surely, until the aliens come down and start harvesting us and you’re miraculously all for vegetarianism, we can agree to disagree.... And you can go ahead and complain about the temperature of your coffee or whatever other #firstworldproblems you may have.

Oh, and P.S.? Just so’s we’re all on the same page: chicken and fish? Not vegetables. Crazy, right?